Don't call us protesters, say the young people​ standing against corporate extraction practices on the Missouri River in North Dakota. We are Protectors.

Unlike the secular political demonstrations I've participated in over the last 30 years, their call is spiritual. Their way of gathering to protect the earth and the water, ceremonial.

"Everybody standing here today is here because someone in your family, one of your ancestors, prayed that you would be here," we were told at a large solidarity event outside the US Army Corps of Engineers today in Portland.

While the Protectors' stance in North Dakota is slowly beginning to attract public attention, it is far from the only front in defense of what was once considered by all peoples, an animate world, a world in which we are all related, human and non-human, seen and unseen.

And it is only the most visible form of prayer for water. In honor of all those whose see their prayers as necessary for the well-being of the world, I'm sharing a recent article from the Washington Post about a 13-day ritual in which dozens of women and girls walk the entire length of the Potomac: "They will speak to the water, sing to the water, and pray for the water."  

"The walkers recite the phrase I will do it for the water in Ojibwe as they hand the water to one another," the article reports.

Organizer Sharon Day, 65, of St. Paul, Minnesota, is asked "if the walkers’ goal is to raise awareness about water pollution. Sure, awareness is nice, she responds — but that’s a paltry goal. The intent of this walk is to speak to the water’s spirit, not to a human audience.

"'All the while, we’re speaking to that water. We’re telling the water how much we care about her,' Day said. 'We really do support the work of other environmental groups. We believe what’s missing from most of this work is the idea that the water has a spirit, and we as spiritual people need to speak to that spirit.'"

..."She doesn’t view her walks as a form of protest. A child of the ’60s, she protested plenty — against the Vietnam War, in favor of civil rights and feminists and lesbians and American Indians. 'I spent my entire life protesting — until I carried that water,' she said. 'It’s not a protest. It’s a movement toward something with love. You’re doing it because you love these rivers.'"

The article also quotes Beth Brent, who planned to participate for a week and ended up walking for two months. "'It’s a prayer. Something about being in prayer every day, it’s powerful.' ...Brent, too, has worked with water cleanup organizations, and found something in the walking that was missing there. 'They keep it in the realm of science and water monitoring. That’s a very colonizing, Western white male way of engaging with nature,' she said, noting that Ojibwe tradition allows only women to carry the water on these walks, with men in supporting roles."

Day was asked, “Auntie, do you really think this is doing any good?” As the article recounts, "The child doubted that the women’s walk could prevent further degradation of the environment. 'The mining companies, they’re so strong. They have so much money,' the girl said.

"Day responded: 'But the water’s more powerful. The water’s more powerful and that’s who we’re speaking to.'"

Read the full article and get involved with #NODAPL Solidarity.

​"I talk to her every day," my friend says, of her mother who died last year. I've always been more tongue tied. Not with the living, usually. But with the dead.

Imagined conversations, remembered conversations - my thoughts are filled with these, exchanges with my father, my Nonna, my friends Bill, Marcy, Kathy, and more.

But to speak out loud - to them, to those who came before them, whose lives collectively, cumulatively, ended up as me - is to render me shy, uncertain, inept.

I used a song to unscrew my jaw when I knew I needed to say certain things to my dad at the memorial I held for him in my backyard eight months after he died. 

"Operator, well could you help me place this call? 'Cause I can't read the number that you just gave me. There's something in my eyes, You know it happens every time. I think about the love that I thought would save me."

Jim Croce (1943-1973) was the sound track to those fifth and sixth grade years when my father left us again and again for an affair he was unable to break off. And then he left for good, moving 6,000 miles away six days after his divorce from my mother was final on my twelfth birthday.

I bought two copies of Croce's Greatest Hits 25 years later when my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer: one for him, one for me. Already unable to do many things for himself, he shrugged his consent when I offered to put it on the stereo. We wept through nearly every song. Those around us were badly discomfited. But I like to think that he and I, in those tear-soaked moments, were speaking the same language for perhaps the first time.

*          *          *

"The day my second daughter, Marina, was born, was the second happiest day of my life," Tamara Wedin says. "But it was also the second most heartbreaking. She was beautiful and perfect and had the deepest blue eyes you've ever seen...ten perfect little piggy toes...but she was not breathing. She had died two days prior, which we were fortunate enough to watch on ultrasound as her last heartbeat showed on the monitor."

Tamara has channeled her family's agony - grief that came close to taking her down - into a support program for other veterans who've experienced pregnancy loss or the death of an infant.
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One in four pregnancies ends in a loss, according to Tamara, and studies show that for veterans and military families, the risks are even higher. Taps for Babies, now in its second year, is determined to educate others about the very real need for support after a pregnancy loss or infant death, and to make sure veterans are connected to the very best support the community and VA system has to offer. The event, the first of its kind for veterans in the nation, brings together grieving families, non-profit organizations, and VA staff.

At the inaugural Taps for Babies program last year at the Portland VA Hospital, I witnessed two of the most moving sights of my life. The first was the playing of taps for the "babies lost too soon" to military families. A uniformed honor guard, accompanied by the mournful notes of a bugle, slowly and ceremoniously folded a flag and placed it on an empty chair in the front of the auditorium. Those dignified moments were a time outside of regular time, in which the pregnancy and birth traumas experienced by veterans and their families received long-overdue acknowledgement.

Just as moving as the silence that filled the space around the bugle notes were the words we heard from an unexpected speaker. Among the children present on this family-focused day were Tamara's infant son and her older daughter Kiri, who had served as unofficial ambassador to those of us setting up exhibit tables, offering to help organize our displays.

When all the grown-up speakers had finished their remarks and the VA chaplain prepared to close the program, four year-old Kiri approached for the microphone. She told us about her sister Marina, about her death and the ways in which her family keeps her memory a part of their lives. She offered the simple lessons from their experience as a gift of support to others.    

Tamara tells me, "Kiri has already asked me if she is speaking this time. She asks me almost daily how she can help the mommies who've lost their babies. She always wants me to pass on the most profound things."

Tamara welcomes inquiries about the October 28 event in Portland, Oregon and how to get a Taps for Babies program started in your community. Currently working with the Orlando Veteran's Administration on starting a program, Tamara quotes the saying, "There is no expiration on my oath of enlistment." She says, "This program is ultimately about looking out for each other and leaving no one behind." Email: [email protected]